The few who remained of the Shield-burg sprang overboard. Some were killed by men who were waiting in boats to dispose of the fugitives, others escaped by diving and swimming, and reached Danish and Swedish ships where they asked for, and were given, quarter. Einar, the archer, was one of those thus saved, and he is heard of later in the Danish wars of England.
Olaf was never seen again. Sigvald's ships, after having watched the fight from afar, were rowing up to the victorious fleets, and for a long time there was a rumour that King Olaf had slipped out of his coat of mail as he swam under water, and then rose and eluded Erik's boats, and reached one of Sigvald's ships, where he was hidden. The tale ran that he had been taken back to Wendland, where he was waiting to reappear some day in Norway and claim his own. But years went on and there were no tidings of King Olaf Tryggveson. He had been drowned in his armour under the stern of the "Long Serpent."
King Olaf is still, after nine centuries, one of the popular heroes of the Norwegian people. He had a twofold fame, as the ideal of a sea-king, as the ruler who tried in his own wild untaught way to win the land of the Fiords to Christendom. Another Olaf, who completed this last work a few years later, and who, like Olaf Tryggveson, reigned over Norway in right of his prowess and his descent from Harold the Fair-haired, is remembered as St. Olaf, saint and martyr; but no exploit of either king lives in popular tradition so brightly as the story of Olaf Tryggveson's death-battle at Svold. "My life is in God's hands," he had said, "but flight would be shame for ever." His fight against desperate odds and ending in defeat and death won him fame for ever.
CHAPTER IV
SLUYS
1340
The gold "nobles" of the coinage of King Edward III show in conventional fashion the King standing in the waist of a ship with a high bow and poop, the red-cross banner of St. George at the stern and the lions of England and the lilies of France emblazoned on his shield. The device typifies his claim to the sovereignty of the narrow seas between England and the Continent, the prize won for him by the fleet that conquered at Sluys.
Sluys is often spoken of as the sea-fight that inaugurated the long victorious career of the British Navy. It would be more correct to say that it was the battle which, by giving King Edward the command of the Channel, made his successful invasion of France possible, and secured for England the possession of Calais. Holding both Dover and Calais the English for two centuries were masters of the narrow sea-gate through which all the trade between northern Europe and the rest of the world had to pass. They had the power of bringing severe pressure to bear upon the German cities of the Hansa League, the traders of the Low Countries, the merchants of Spain, Genoa, and Venice, by their control of this all-important waterway. Hence the claim upheld till the seventeenth century that the King of England was "Sovereign of the Seas," and that in the Channel and the North Sea every foreign ship had to lower her sails and salute any English "King's ship" that she met.
Sluys, which had such far-reaching consequences, was not the first of English naval victories. Alfred the Great maintained in the latter part of his reign a fleet of small ships to guard the coasts against the Norse and Danish pirates, and this won him the name of founder of the British Navy. But for centuries after there was no attempt at forming or keeping up a regular naval establishment. Alfred's navy must have been dispersed under his weaker successors, for the Northmen never found any serious obstacles to their raids. Harold had no navy, and the result was that in a single twelvemonth England was twice invaded, first by Harold Hadrada and Tostig, who were beaten at Stamford Bridge, and then by William the Norman, who conquered at Hastings. But even the Conqueror had no fighting fleet. His ships were used merely to ferry his army across the Channel, and he made no attempt to use them against the Northmen who harried the east coast. The record of victory begins with the reign of King John, when in 1213 William Longsword, his half-brother, with a fleet gathered from the shipping of Dover and the south-eastern ports, destroyed a French fleet that had assembled on the coast of the Netherlands to transport an invading army to England. Damme (i.e. "the dams or embankments to keep out the sea") was then a fortified port. It is now a Dutch village, some miles from the coast, in the midst of green meadows won from the sea, with roads shaded by avenues of trees, and only the traffic of its canal to remind it that it once had a harbour.